The present invention relates generally to multi-function peripherals and more particularly to image output systems using Raster Image Processors (RIP).
Multi-function peripherals are able to handle different jobs simultaneously such as fax jobs, print jobs, copy jobs, POPclient print jobs, TopAccess Composer (TAC) print jobs, etc. Because of the wide variety of job types, there are several considerations such as how the controller is going to manage the Central Processing Unit (CPU) power for those jobs, how to control the status of jobs, for example pause, resume, cancel, etc., how to expand the job types handled by the multifunction peripheral in the future, and how to manage different types of raster conversions at the same time and perform load balancing.